Ashe had never felt more scared, or more alive than when in the midst of battle. She loosed an arrow at a warrior before her, a member of the Tribe of the Winter's Claw.
The Winter's Claw had recently stumbled upon a relatively prosperous trove of resources; a freshwater spring, along with a small icy plain in which hordes upon hordes of tundra beasts roamed. Now, the Frost Archers wanted it. So, naturally, by the unwritten laws of the land, if a tribe wanted something, they would take it.
Preferably by force.
The man in front of her twitched twice, staring at the arrow protruding from his chest in surprise, his blood staining the ice beneath him. He crumpled, his sword falling to the snow with a soft poof.
She had already felled three of the Claw warriors, and her companions had followed suit, laying waste to the remnants of the ragtag hostile war party. Another Claw, a woman this time, charged her with a spiked mace covered with icicles, and although it seemed to be almost decorative, the way it reflected the rays of the harsh noonday sun, the dried blood covering its spiked head disproved that notion. Ashe nocked another arrow, drawing the bowstring back to her cheek in one practiced, fluid motion. At this range, there was no need to calculate range, deflection, arcing and all of the other little nuances of a long range shot. After waiting a second to harness the full draw power of the bow behind the shaft, she released the arrow. It flew straight and true, but at the last second the arrow which had been aimed at the woman's heart struck her left shoulder as she flinched instinctively, turning sideways. The Claw warrior cursed but kept running.
By that time, she was so close to Ashe that she wouldn't have enough time to fire another arrow. So instead, Ashe dropped her bow and clawed at her belt, drawing her twin hunting knives. The blades glimmered like ice. The woman swung the heavy mace, and Ashe leapt backwards. The head thudded into the snow, white puffs of sleet flying up. Ashe darted in, trying to close the distance needed to use her shorter weapons when the Claw yanked the club from the permafrost and raised the cudgel above her head in preparation for another overhead strike.
The archer leapt in with her blades crossed. Normally, if a mace head struck a dagger head on, the dagger would shatter easily. But Ashe didn't try blocking the head; her blades locked at the hilt of the mace. Without any leverage, the Claw tried to whip her mace back. But she was slow, surprised that her strike didn't land on its intended target. Ashe reached out and grabbed the club and yanked it downwards. Her opponent grimaced, then screamed as the Frost Archer struck a quick jab with the knife handle on the outside of her elbow, popping the joint inwards. The mace fell, and Ashe took quick advantage of the woman's disarmament.
As the woman doubled over, Ashe stamped backward with the edge of her boot, catching the Claw's foot between arch and ankle and driving into it. As the woman bent even further to clasp her injured foot, the Archer pivoted on her left heel and her right elbow slammed upward into the Claw's nose, jerking her upright again and sending her staggering back, eyes streaming from the pain.
Ashe took her invitation and grabbed the woman, spinning her around. Placing her elbow across the Claw's neck, she squeezed. As the woman in her grasp began to struggle and flail her arms wildly, Ashe spun the knife in her right hand around into the icepick grip: blade side down. She plunged it into the woman's abdomen, feeling specks of hot blood spurting outward, staining her hand a crimson red. Startled, Ashe noticed that, as the Claw warrior fell, her face was young; that she couldn't have been much older than fifteen or sixteen.
Leaving the knife in the Claw's body, she lowered the warrior down gently to the snow beneath. Ashe leaned over the Claw and spoke the traditional death passing. "Na'me xera thrumidil vevrath hamas delah. May the stars carry your spirit to the heavens."
Gasping for air, the woman managed a faint reply. "Ba xera jandra...gedrahadamas... rengma ze'in. To the place that our forefathers sang of."
"Zah xera gardara enoch ze'in. And our ancestors dreamt of." Speaking in the common tongue once more, Ashe spoke, "Go in peace. Your spirit is released to the Void." The woman in front of her heaved once more as she laboured for breath, then was no more.
Ashe retrieved her knives and bow and then looked out at the battleground. Her companions had given no quarter. That was easily apparent from the many scattered corpses littered around the area, the last few survivors fleeing. She dragged her own recent kill down to her party. "How many of them were there?"
Thineth, one of the party's four archers replied, "I counted fourteen." Seeing the corpse that Ashe carried to her, she quickly added, "Make that fifteen." The Frost Archer frowned as the implications struck her.
"Alright, gather around me." Ashe's squad of ten complied quickly. "This was too small to have been a war band. This was either a blind scouting party or a raiding party, so the Claw shall not know of our presence here yet. We can still push on with our mission."
Hastdir, one of the only swordsmen in their party as well as the best scout, muttered to her, "Lady Ashe, there is a cold here that is stronger than before. We Freljordians are born with frost in our veins, but there is a chill that deadens my bones. It has spread across this land." Speaking then to the group as a whole, he announced, "The Gelid Vortex has arrived."
The Gelid Vortex was, unlike many of the storms that raged across the Valoran tundra, naturally formed. The rest of the hurricanes of snow and ice were byproducts of magical fallout from the many wars that had been fought across the Freljordian landscape. It was massive, three kilometers in every direction, swirling from the eye, clouds of whirling shards of ice and snow and sleet serving as deadlier projectiles than any arrow.
The heralding of this grim news sent a wave of nervous chatter spreading through the group.
"Are you sure?" Ashe asked. If the Gelid really was here, then it put a huge time strain on their mission.
"Aye. The clouds grow dark, and the wind begins to bite, furious at the intrusion of Na'Yekah, the Chaos Bringer. I sense this is no regular storm; I believe in a week it shall be here, maybe more. Maybe less. The winds are always fickle."
Ashe pondered what this would mean. They could either accomplish the liberation of the spring and tundra from Claw control long enough for the Tribe of the Frost Archer to come in force, or fall back and wait for the storm to pass and try to wrest control from the Claw. But everyday that passed was one that caused the meager resources the Archer's were living on to dwindle further.
"I do not want to risk your lives," Ashe spoke, "but I do not relish the thought of our people starving because of our complacency."
"Very well then. We shall-"
"Claw war party approaching!" The yell broke the quiet, brooding atmosphere of the Frost Archer party, and all of its members sprang up, weapons in hand.
Ashe looked up, to the crest of the hill above them. Several small figures were visible atop of it and were rapidly growing larger. "Go! Form a box formation; I'll pick off their leaders." The Archers complied, and a small line of blades bristled outwards, protecting the archers. The Claw war party was almost two hundred meters by the time the formation was formed. They approached quickly, screaming bloody murder.
"Draw!" The archers drew arrows from their quivers and nocked the arrows, hooking the arrow onto the bowstring via a clip on the end of an arrow. Tugging the bowstring with her gloved right hand back to her cheek, she exhaled and held her breath.
"Aim!" Ashe raised her bow. When firing in a volley, archers would fire as a group at a hostile body of warriors, rather than picking individual targets. This way, massed arrows would have a higher chance to strike an enemy.
"Fire!" The twang of bowstrings releasing filled the air, as a small group of arrows traveled towards the Claw war party. Three of them fell, arrows piercing through bodies like a hot knife through butter. Blood ran from their bodies, crimson droplets falling to the snow.
Then there was no time to repeat the time consuming process of reloading before Claw blades clashed against Frost Archer blades. The crash of steel hitting steel rang in Ashe's ears. She slung the bow over her shoulder. One man forced his way through the Frost Archer line, and his eyes landed on Ashe. She locked eyes with him, and could instantly guess at the calculations spinning through his head. The small circlet binding her hair was simple, but intricately decorated. He probably had put two and two together and chosen her as a target.
Archers were normally lightly armed, and the man took advantage of the fact, coming in extremely for a fatal blow. So Ashe ran forward, arms outstretched. The swordsman, surprised at her aggression, stopped in his tracks. That was all the time Ashe needed to wrap her hands around the man's right leg. He instinctively tried to kick her off right his left foot, and then Ashe placed her head on the outside of the left side of his pelvis. The Frost Archer took two lunging steps forward, making sure to put her full weight onto the man, and the momentum sent the man crashing to the ground, sword skittering away on the gleaming ice.
He grunted in surprise, and Ashe felt the shock reverberating through her body as they hit the cold ground together. It was a glancing blow; the same, however, could not be said for the man. Taking most of the force of the blow had been taken by the Claw warrior and judging from the audible snap coming from his abdomen, he had broken a rib. His mouth was open, and Ashe guessed he was going into shock. She pulled the twin knives from her belt and plunged them into his exposed abdomen.
Without pause, she scrambled off the man's body now bleeding into the cold dirt and ice. Ashe glanced around, spinning her head as she attempted to spot her enchanted bow. The one downside to the powerful weapon passed down through her bloodline was that, despite its ancient enchantments, in the snowy landscape, the bow made of ice blended in with the landscape, making it hard to spy.
The archer quickly saw what she was looking for: the telltale glimmer of the enchanted ice. She rushed over, finding it laying discarded in a small snow drift. Picking it up, she reached for an arrow at the quiver at her back. Feeling the comforting chill of ice solidifying into ice in her palm, she twirled the enchanted arrow deftly. Spinning the arrow so that it was aligned to nock to the bow, she pulled back on the bowstring.
Ashe's first target was selected: a Claw engaged in close quarters combat with Hastdir. It would be a difficult shot for most archers, but there were multiple parts of a body that stuck out that one would never consider as as large enough for a target. The left calf, extended beyond an opponent's silhouette, the right shoulder of a larger man, the left eye socket of a taller man. All were viable targets, and all were targets Ashe were willing to quickly exploit.
Releasing the arrow aimed at his left eye, she hastily nocked and released two other arrows towards the left thigh, to sever the femoral artery to cause the man to bleed out, and one towards his calf. The third arrow served to impair his movement, so that if all else failed to kill him, he would at least be removed from the fight until later "clean-up" after the major part of the skirmish was concluded.
It wasn't necessary though, as the man fell to his knees under the sudden barrage of arrows. Hastdir swung his sword at his exposed neck. The man's head flew one way; his body fell the other way.
Then, as quickly as the fighting had begun, it was over. A silence as cold and harsh as the tundra itself settled over the Frost Archers.
"Are you harmed?" inquired Ashe.
Hastdir shook his head, too out of breath to reply in words.
Ashe surveyed the area. The horizon seemed to hold no more surprises; no more Claw war parties coming out of the woodwork (or, in her case, icework?) for now. Two other Archers walked back to meet her; they met her gaze and nodded once, signalling that they were safe.
Then, a yell caught Ashe's attention. It was soft, and Ashe turned, hoping to catch another sound. The yell came again, louder. Desperate. Ashe ran towards the location, careful to ensure that her bow was still at her side and that her three powerful enchanted crystal arrows were still tucked away inside her left boot. The cowl of her cape blew down into her face during her flight, so she flipped it away from her head, letting it trail behind her in the wind. Her long hair, nearly a flat silver, blew along behind her, following her like a wild spirit of the wind.
She spotted a black hump in the distance, with another hump standing up, forming a sort of an L-shape in the air. Ashe redoubled her efforts, calves burning from the strenuous activity. The adrenaline in her system had long faded away, causing every single discomfort to suddenly be aware to her at what seemed to be the same moment.
Upon closer inspection, the archer saw that the bottom part of the "L" she had seen was actually a body, wearing the typical Frost Archer garb, while the upright part was another Frost Archer, kneeling over the body. A dark stain surrounded the fallen archer, and Ashe knew instinctively that whoever was wounded might not have that long to live.
The kneeling archer looked up, and Ashe recognized her tearstained face as Maénes, one of the more junior members on the expedition. "Princess..."
Ashe struggled to swallow the lump in her throat. Raw emotion threatened to overwhelm her, the feeling that urged her to fall to her knees and join her fellow Archer on the ground and mourn for the to-be dead. But the rational side of her mind told her to banish the emotions, her usual mode of operation. To be an efficient and deadly killer, one could hardly afford the luxury of following their conscience, or worse, emotions.
Her rational side kicked in.
"Maénes. Dry your tears; your friend is not yet dead."
The younger Archer nodded, still sniffling. Ashe winced, knowing how harsh her words sounded, especially given the circumstances, but hysterics would not save anyone. Actions would.